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Sunday, June 30, 2013

Man of Steel: Movie of... Something Less Substantial

image from IMDb

Yeah, that's about how I felt too, Clark.

I love midnight movies. I don’t know whether it’s the idea of seeing a movie the
minute it comes out, or the adrenaline that comes from knowing how late I’m
going to be out and that most sane people have been asleep for at least an
hour. Maybe it’s having to get
there an hour early to get seats and watching the theater slowly fill up around
me that makes me feel like it’s a big deal.

Man
of Steel was supposed to be a big deal.I get excited for the majority of movie trailers I see, but
I was extra excited for this one.On the scale of movie-trailer-excitement, this one was probably slightly
above LoneRanger and below Thor 2
(I could do an entire post on how excited I am for Thor 2, but I’ll spare you).

I had meant to be finished with Smallville by the time Man of Steel hit theaters, so that I
would be totally caught up on the Superman mythos.Smallville, for
all its imperfections and downright grievous errors, provides a mostly-faithful
account of Clark Kent’s journey, and for better or worse, it’s my only exposure
to Superman, since I haven’t seen the Christopher Reeve movies or read any of
the comics. But I persevered
through eight seasons of Smallville
before I couldn’t take it anymore, and I couldn’t help comparing Man of Steel
back to it.

It shouldn’t have been a tough
battle.

The movie opened strongly, with the
war ripping through Krypton and Lara and Jor-El fighting to save the life of
their son.Zod was well-cast and chillingly
evil, even if his goons were lackluster.Kal-El gets Fed-Exed to Earth in a pod that looks like it belonged in Avatar, Zod and his goons are locked
away “forever,” and Krypton explodes.This is the last good part of the movie.

We are first introduced to Clark
Kent as an adult, blazing in both senses, shirtlessly saving sailors from a
burning rig.We see his childhood
in a series of awkwardly placed flashbacks, rather than in chronological
order.This is a bad way to get
someone to invest emotionally in a character, because the importance of each
scene is explained as it happens, rather than building a solid character from
the bottom up.Man of Steel’s Superman is a leaning
Jenga tower of character development.

The death of Jonathan Kent was
supposed to be a hugely distressing event in Clark Kent’s life, and it was completely
passed over in this movie, with only a brooding Superman looking at a
gravestone to tell us that Pa Kent had died.This would be more upsetting if not for the fact that
Jonathan is devoid of any personality the few times we see him.Maybe I’m unfairly comparing him to the
Jonathan Kent in Smallville, who was
a strong and upstanding father to Clark, and whose death haunted Clark for a
long time afterward.

Superman enters a ship in a shirt
and pants and meets biological father’s a hologram.Jor-El explains to his son where he came from and why he’s
special.Then Superman walks out
of the ship/cave in a spandex suit and
cape without any explanation whatsoever as to where those wardrobe items
came from.Maybe the writers
couldn’t think of a way to have him see the suit for the first time and keep a
straight face so they skipped over its introduction altogether.The flight scene that follows is almost
as awkward as the suit transition.Did he not know he could fly?How did he discover any of his other powers?

I was excited by the prospect of
Amy Adams playing Lois Lane, because I get hives whenever Erica Durance appears
onscreen in Smallville, and I thought Adams’ portrayal would be far more
tolerable.While not as grating as
Durance, Adams’ performance slides all the way to the other extreme, and we get
another bran muffin of a character in Lane.At least she matches the rest of the cast.The kiss scene at the end of the big
fight was so forced it was comical.Everything we see of Superman up to that point tells us he’s an
emotionally distant loner, and certainly not the type of person to take a
minute after a huge battle to smooch a damsel he just met.

The poor character development is
illustrated nicely by the scene where a woman whom we’ve seen perhaps twice
before is trapped beneath rubble and about to die, and two male peripheral
characters are trying desperately to free her, and it’s supposed to be
gut-wrenching because she’s terrified and pretty and crying and the music gets minor and
dissonant, except that I don’t even know her name or if she’s romantically or
otherwise connected to either of the
men trying to get her out.

There were parts of this movie that
were cool.For all the screen time
that should probably have been used developing characters, there are lots of
explosions and fight scenes. The
gravity weapon that Zod was using to terra-form Earth for the Kryptonians
(wouldn’t that be “krypto-forming”?) was a neat idea. Henry Cavill is one
attractive human being, and spends copious amounts of screen time reminding us
of that.And I guess lens flares
are the latest filmmaking fad, because at one point there were so many on the
screen that I was honestly surprised JJ Abrams wasn’t the director (wasn’t
Michael Bay, either).

I walked into the theater totally
prepared for Man of Steel to prove me
wrong about DC’s movies, but the truth is it couldn’t even outshine Smallville, and didn’t hold a candle to Avengers or Iron Man 3.

4 comments:

The explosion to seriousness ratio was out of whack. Where Avengers had mass carnage, it also had a much lighter tone than what Man of Steel was shooting for. The two elements worked well together. Man of Steel was going for a Dark Knight level of seriousness while also having a over the top level of destruction. It did not mix well.

Love your movie reviews. "leaning Jenga tower of character development...?" Where does she come up with such word pictures? Anyway, from the perspective of a grandfather, I thought there were way too many explosions. And what's the fun in watching the irresistible force smash into the immovable object time after time after time there toward the end? I like a good story. This wasn't it. Oh BTW...If you didn't see the original Christopher Reeve Superman you missed the essence. It didn't take itself so seriously and wasn't trying to be dark and meaningful. Nice write, young Padawan. May the farce be with you.